In the twenty-five years that we have been running Milestone Films, we have never before reviewed or commented publicly on anyone else’s film—except to recommend it. But we have now encountered a new feature film that purports to “satirize” a film and a filmmaker we represent and have spent years researching. While we are absolute believers in freedom of speech and artistic expression and do not dispute that the producers, writers and stars of Jason and Shirley have every right to make their “re-vision” of the making of Shirley Clarke’s great documentary Portrait of Jason, we feel we must go on the record about the film’s inaccurate and simplistic portrayals of a brilliant filmmaker and her charismatic subject.

Director Stephen Winter (and co-writers Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters) have created a fictitious drama that imagines what might have happened on December 3, 1966 when Shirley Clarke spent twelve hours with Jason Holliday, Carl Lee, Jeri Sopanen, Jim Hubbard and Bob Fiore shooting Portrait of Jason. The filmmakers claim the right to re-imagine the events that took place in that Hotel Chelsea apartment, but they fail to understand something that Shirley Clarke knew and conveyed in all her films: the need for integrity.

Clarke’s first feature, The Connection, a fiction film based partly on real people, has enormous respect for all its characters, an understanding of humanity, and a love for cinema. Shirley knew that a genuine artist values inner truth, whether the film is a documentary or a dramatic feature. And of course, Shirley did not use real names. She knew that when you use real people’s names and identities, you need to seek and explore the truth in all its complexities. Ornette: Made in America, a film that she and Ornette Coleman were very proud to create, is an example of Clarke’s quest for meaning and authenticity.

We at Milestone are now in the seventh year of “Project Shirley,” our ongoing commitment to learn everything about Clarke as a director, an artist and a person. With the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater and the Clarke estate, we have digitized nearly one hundred of her features, short films, outtakes, unfinished projects, home movies, and experimental films and videos. We have gone through thousands of pages of letters, contracts, and Shirley’s diaries. We have interviewed and talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with her.

We have heard wonderful stories, tragic stories, and stories of such real pain that they are almost unbearable. Shirley Clarke was a sister, wife, mother, dancer, lover, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and yes, for a sad period, a junkie. It wasn’t intended, but along the way we fell in love with Shirley and came to feel that we owed it to her to create a portrait of a real woman and an artist. Shirley’s daughter Wendy Clarke and her extended family have supported our efforts every step of the way, encouraging us to reveal what is true, for better or worse. We have shared our discoveries with the world in theaters, on television, on DVD and Blu-Ray, in lectures — and in our exhaustive press kits (available on our website, free for everyone).

We have strived for the highest levels of accuracy, knowing that critics, academics, bloggers, and the general public deserve and depend on our research. We corroborated all the oral histories we conducted using primary sources, including original letters, interviews, and contracts. Finally, we asked people who knew Shirley to check and proof all our work. We have shared this research with every filmmaker, scholar and critic who has asked us for information.

So it was truly agonizing for us to watch Stephen Winter’s Jason and Shirley, a film that is bad cinema and worse ethics—that cynically appropriates and parodies the identities of real people, stereotyping and humiliating them and doing disservice to their memory. The filmmakers may call it an homage, but their complete lack of research and their numerous factual errors and falsehoods have betrayed everyone who was involved in making Portrait of Jason.

Winter and his team call their film an “imagination” of the night (although they stage the filming during the day) ofDecember 3, when Shirley Clarke shot Portrait of Jason. But interestingly, they only use the real names of those participants who have died: Clarke, Jason Holliday and Carl Lee (perhaps because you cannot libel the dead). They did not interview the people who were on the set that long night and who are still around—filmmakers Bob Fiore and Jim Hubbard.

They also chose not to work with Shirley’s daughter, artist and filmmaker Wendy Clarke, whom they never bothered to contact (and go out of their way to mock in the film). Jason and Shirley even features a title card in the closing credits thanking Wendy, implying that she has given her approval for the film. In truth, Wendy’s response, when she finally saw Jason and Shirley, was: “I don’t want people seeing this film to think there is any truth to it. This film tells nasty lies and is a parasitic attempt to gain prominence from true genius.”

Similarly, the filmmakers never asked us at Milestone for access to the reams of documents we have discovered from the making of Portrait of Jason. Instead, they preferred to pretend to know what happened, to create their own “Shirley Clarke,” “Carl Lee,” and “Jason Holliday,” rather than try to create honest and respectful portraits of these very real people.

Lazy filmmakers make bad movies and Jasonand Shirley is false, flaccid, and boring—unforgivable cinematic sins. Perhaps its most egregious and painful crime is taking the strong, brilliant woman that Shirley Clarke truly was and portraying her as a lumpy, platitude-spouting Jewish hausfrau—an inept cineaste who doesn’t know what she is doing and eventually needs her boyfriend to “save” the film for her. In service of their alleged investigation into race relations (a topic Shirley explored far better with her powerful and intelligent films The Connection, The Cool World, Portrait of Jason and Ornette: Made in America), they reduced her to a sexist cliché—the little woman—and a tedious cliché at that.

Shirley Clarke was wild, creative, brilliant, graceful, challenging, incredibly stylish, vibrant, and alive with the possibilities of life. At home at the center of many creative circles in New York City and around the world, she was adored by countless admirers—despite (or sometimes because of) her faults and failings. And Shirley is still loved by those who remember her—the people who worked on her films, her friends, her family, and the audiences who are rediscovering her great films. She was incredibly special. The misshapen caricature of Clarke in Jason and Shirley insults and trivializes a great artist and pioneer.

We also find “Jason” in Winter’s film to be a one-dimensional and disrespectful distortion of the very complicated man who was born Aaron Payne in 1924. Jason Holliday’s life was difficult in many ways—as a gay black man he experienced police harassment, poverty, family rejection, imprisonment, painful self-doubt, and innumerable varieties of personal and institutional racism. But he was also vibrantly an original, a self-invented diva, a survivor, and a raconteur of the first order who was the inspiration for his own cinematic Portrait. Shirley decided to make her film in order to explore this extraordinary Scheherazade’s 1001 stories—and the fragile line between his reminiscences and his inventions.

And truly, it is not easy to tell what was real and what was not in Jason’s life. In his “Autobiography” (reprinted in Milestone’s press kit), Holliday talked about appearing on Broadway in “Carmen Jones,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Green Pastures” and about performing his nightclub act in Greenwich Village. And while much of his narrative may seem improbable, the Trenton Historical Society found newspaper articles from the 1950s corroborating Jason’s claim that he was a performer at New York’s Salle de Champagne. So did he study acting with Charles Laughton and dance with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham? We may never know. But the man who spun those marvelous yarns was not the alternately maniacal and weepy loser in Jason and Shirley.

Here are just a few of the other things that are obviously, carelessly and offensively wrong in Jason and Shirley:

In the very beginning, there is a title card stating that the filmmakers were denied access to the outtakes of Portrait of Jason. These recordings were available for all to hear at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where all of Shirley’s archives can be found—or by contacting Milestone. In fact, all the outtakes (30 minutes of audio) were released on November 11, 2014 as a bonus features on Milestone’s DVD and Blu-Ray of the film. That was six months before Jason and Shirley was completed.

In Jason and Shirley, “Jason” has never previously visited “Shirley’s” apartment and knows nothing about her. In reality, they had been friends for many years and Jason would often visit her apartment.

The film states that the cinematographer on Portrait of Jason had worked on Clarke’s other two features. Actually, the film was Jeri Sopanen’s first job with her. Further, absolutely no crew member had an issue about working on Portrait of Jason, as the new film portrays.

In the film “Shirley” says, “See that horrible painting on the wall? My daughter painted that… I have a daughter who is a terrible artist.” Fact: in several video interviews with Shirley (including one released as a bonus feature on Ornette: Made In America, which also came out last November) and in many of her letters and diaries, Clarke talked about how extremely proud she was of her daughter Wendy and her art. Mother and daughter worked happily together for years on many projects including the legendary Tee Pee Video Space Troupe. Wendy’s fine art, textiles, and video work have received critical praise for nearly 50 years. It was needlessly and maliciously hurtful for the filmmakers to include a line that is so obviously false and unkind.

In the film, “Shirley” says her maiden name was Bermberg. She was born Shirley Brimberg.

There is an Academy Award® statue for Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World in “Shirley’s” apartment and the other characters repeatedly mock her for it. The film did win an Oscar®, but although she received directing credit, Shirley had been fired from the final edit and producer Robert Hughes picked up the award. (You can see this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOS70Tqsz7U)

“Shirley” asks “Jason” to go up on the roof of the Hotel Chelsea with her to talk. In reality, her apartment was famously on the roof.

In the film, “Shirley” is unable to finish Portrait of Jason and tells everybody to go home and “Carl Lee” comes in to take over the film and save it. This is ludicrous, wrong and misogynistic. Clarke was a consummate film professional and all her collaborators attest to her skill and drive.

The film ends with a title card stating that Shirley died in New York (which is simply incorrect) and that Carl Lee died of a heroin overdose. Tragically, Lee died of AIDS and this information is in the Milestone press kit.

Another title card indicates that when Jason Holliday died that there were no friends or family listed in his one obituary. In truth, the Trentonian on July 31, 1998 wrote that two sisters, six nieces and two nephews survived him. We found the relatives when doing our research.

The filmmakers have labeled Jason and Shirley a satirical work of fiction. We are just not sure who or what they claim to be satirizing. The film is not ironic, humorous, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. We can only surmise that they are deliberately parodying the idea of cinematic integrity.

On behalf of Milestone, Wendy Clarke, and Shirley Clarke’s extended family and friends, we respectfully ask film fans not to base their appraisal of Clarke and her filmmaking on the unkind depictions in Jason and Shirley.

New York Film Critics Circle Announce
Special Award to Milestone Films In Appreciation of Their Work on Behalf of Filmmaker Shirley Clarke

New York, NY – December 11, 2012 – NYFCC Chairman, Joshua Rothkopf, senior film critic at Time Out New York, announced today that they are giving a Special Award to Dennis Doros and Amy Heller of Milestone Films “for their meticulous, affectionate and ultimately revelatory revisiting of the films of Shirley Clarke.”

Says proposing NYFCC member John Anderson: "Shirley Clarke was a gorgeously baroque and complex personality, a character worthy of a novel or two. But what she did as a filmmaker, the subjects she chose, and how she related as a director to her medium has become so much a part of the vocabulary of cinema that her movies – ‘The Cool World,’ for instance, or ‘Ornette in America’ -- are nothing less than essential. Happily, Milestone is making it possible to see these films the way they should be seen."

The awards will be handed out during their annual ceremony to be held on Monday, January 7, 2013 at Crimson (915 Broadway).

Founded in 1935, the New York Film Critics Circle is the oldest and most prestigious in the country. The circle’s membership includes critics from daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines and the web’s most respected online publications. Every year the organization meets in New York to vote on awards for the calendar year's films. The Circle's awards are often viewed as harbingers of the Oscar nominations. The Circle's awards are also viewed — perhaps more accurately — as a principled alternative to the Oscars, honoring aesthetic merit in a forum that is immune to commercial and political pressures.

The following was my 2012 James Card Memorial Lecture given tonight at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre. It is an annual tribute to James Card and an introduction to that evening's film that I selected, Josephine Baker's Princess Tam Tam.

I would first like to
thank all my friends at the George Eastman House for inviting me to give the
James Card Memorial Lecture. I am truly honored since Jim Card meant so much to
me in my early stages of my career. He still does to this day.

I did have this whole
speech written out for some months on my praise for Jim as my mentor and promoter…

Then I read a little of
his book Seductive Cinema this
morning and realized that I had to change tonight’s talk. It’s been a while
since I first read it and now memories came flooding back. It’s been only
twelve years since his death but in some ways it seems like another time – when
there were giants in the field who first stamped their feet on this earth to
create the film archives where none had existed before them. People like Jim, Henri
Langlois, and so many others.

I assume that many before
me on this stage in past celebrations have talked about his brilliance, his
generosity of spirit, his absolute passion and devotion to the moving image — and
on and on. That all is certainly true – he had an incredible gift for living.
He was a drama king in the best possible sense of the word. He taught me,
through our few talks together, that storytelling is not only an art, but also
an essential one in life. To be able to enthrall your audience and convince
them is an important part of your work. And his ability to do this led to
tonight’s film, but I’ll get to that later.

Now back to this morning.
Reading the first few chapters of Seductive
Cinema, I recalled our first meeting and why we were such kindred souls.
Let me read to you just a few sentences from his book:

“The men who brought about the essential magic of
speechless cinema are few. They include Eadweard Muybridge, James Williamson,
Louis Lumiere, Georges Melies, Thomas Edison and George Eastman. Fellow
historians who may actually chance upon these lines may be horrified by my omissions.
I myself am horrified by the need to include Edison and Eastman.”

Remember, that he wrote
this after having worked at the George Eastman House for almost forty years.
Here’s another…

“David Wark Griffith believed he had invented the
closeup. And film editing and the moving camera and even restrained acting.
Griffith staked out his claim to the “invention” of all these basic elements of
cinematic art by taking out an ad in the New York Dramatic Mirror of December
3, 1913. And such is the power of the printed word, and rarely have pre-1913,
non-Griffith films figured in preserved study collections, that too many
historians have believed Griffith’s preposterous claims.”

Whether he was right or
wrong – though he usually right -- it doesn’t matter. What it reminded me of
was this. As charming and wonderful as he was, Jim Card could also be a
cantankerous son of a gun.… and this is what I loved best about him. We
immediately found that we were both passionate about a striving towards
perfection and had complete disdain for anyone who was willing to take the easy
way in life. And this included several film archivists we immediately agreed
about.

Another thing. Whenever
anyone proclaimed something was the first or greatest, Jim would find it
nonsense. He would always have a ready answer with another film that was
earlier or finer. He felt that by proclaiming anything as finite and set in
stone, you would be limiting your future discoveries. You wouldn’t be open for
the next surprise in life. The next Louise Brooks, the next Josephine Baker. I
took this philosophy to Milestone; we’re always looking for a way to screw up
all those textbooks on cinema with our next find.

So while the British Film
Institute was setting their Sights — and Sound — on the fifty greatest films of
all-time and the Museum of Modern Art was busily creating “The Canon,” Jim Card
and his compatriot-in-crime Henri Langlois were fighting every inch of the way.
How can you search out and value the wonders of Paul Fejos’s LONESOME or Clarence Brown and Maurice
Tourneur’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS when
you are blinded by only the worth of Griffith and Eisenstein and their friends?

You might think my calling
this a fight is a way to dramatize an intellectual conversation. Let me tell
you this battle was very real …. it was
intense … and every inch was fought for in the halls of the archives tooth and
nail. For Jim and Langlois were intent on saving everything – that all films
must be preserved and not just those sanctified by the Archivist Gods who
controlled the canon. And during those dark days, there were films, like
Herbert Brenon’s Kiss for Cinderella, that were indeed allowed to disintegrate because
they weren’t considered worthy of the cost of preserving them.

So when I met Jim, we
found we were similar in nature. It was about absolute commitment, a constant
search for what I now call “outsider” cinema, a desire to find the next amazing
film, to be passionate and intense about your beliefs and yes, a hatred of
certain people who were too stodgy and set in their ways to believe that there will
always be new discoveries. All that came very easy for me.

So this was in the
mid-1980s when I was very young and just starting out at Kino -- with
absolutely no experience in the archival world, Jim helped me immensely in my
first two restorations – guiding me through Erich von Stroheim’s QUEEN KELLY and being an essential
collaborator on Raoul Walsh’s SADIE
THOMPSON. He also taught be an incredible lesson — that to save a film,
sometimes you have to break society’s laws. Yes, and I confessed this first at
a Selznick Commencement speech only a couple years ago that even though he was
retired, he did help me pay off a guard to enter into the George Eastman House
film archive one Saturday morning to find the missing soundtrack to QUEEN KELLY.

His wonderful stories
aside, here’s the best part about Jim’s mentorship. During the restoration of
these two films, sometimes, when I was bafflingly stupid and going in the wrong
direction, Jim would pause for dramatic intent and say sternly, “think about it
Dennis.” And he allowed me – and to be honest, it took much longer for me than
it did for him – to come up with the solution myself. That he was very proud of
me when I got it right was something, but even better, only the most confident
of teachers allows their students to think for themselves. That’s a much better
education.

So to end this speech and
to tell you why I chose this film tonight. After QUEEN KELLY and SADIE THOMPSON were out and my career
was launched – I sent him a long-desired 16mm print of DIARY OF A LOST GIRL as
a present from Kino.

A few months later, Jim was back in New York City
and wanted to take us to lunch to thank us. After we dined, we were walking
down Broadway. Jim was suggesting a lot of films we could do, but Don was not
into any big silent film projects. (One of them, DRAGON PAINTER, Milestone got to release many years later.) To be fair, SADIE THOMPSON had cost a lot of money to produce and it was still deep in the red. So that’s when Jim mentioned two films that he promised would make us a lot of money.
They were Princess Tam Tam and Zou
Zou. They were two films made in France in the 1930s that featured
incredible performances by the great Josephine Baker and he enthralled me with
stories about the films and the great Josephine. Honestly, I had no clue what the hell these films were and
I probably had no idea who Josephine Baker was.

Well, Don would have no part of this idea. For six
months I pleaded to acquire these films. Not because of anything I knew. But I
always fell easily into Jim’s spell – and let’s face it, I still wanted to
impress and please my mentor. Finally, Don agreed on one condition — that we
could get them cheaply. And this is where I can talk of Jim’s generosity. He
told me that PRINCESS TAM TAM was
with the GEH and I had to negotiate with them on the film. But he told me his
secret – to preserve ZOU ZOU for GEH,
he had himself paid for a 35mm negative with his own money and it was at John
Allen’s lab. But since John had given him such a good price, that it was really
John’s negative. So I called John Allen and he
insisted that Jim owned it. I called Jim back and he insisted that John did. But a few days later, just in order to
see the film out there and for people to see Josephine Baker again, they both
agreed to give Kino free access to the negative as long as we made prints at
John’s lab.

And with ZOU
ZOU in hand and with Jim’s blessing, GEH readily agreed to give us access
to PRINCESS TAM TAM for no advance
money and a percentage of future income. This gave Don the confidence to go
ahead with the project. And here’s the thing. The country fell in love once
again with Josephine Baker and these two films. Critics acclaimed them and
audiences flocked to these fifty year old unknown films. Kino made a ton of money. John Allen made money making us prints. George Eastman House made a huge amount of money from
royalties on Princess Tam Tam. And
Jim? He was truly happy for all of us and never asked for credit, a dime, or
even another 16mm print. So when I was asked a few months ago to choose a film
tonight, I knew it wasn’t going to be one of my films. It had to be Jim’s.

Despite my youthful ignorance, Jim immediately
welcomed me into the club of film archivists. Even if I didn’t believe in myself,
he did. Back then, competition was rife among film archivists and petty
disagreements could last a lifetime. Yet he never saw me as competition even as
I worked on some of his favorite films. I can’t really tell you if he ever put
his arm on my shoulders to encourage me, but to this day, I can still feel his
encouragement and his warmth.